Talk:1987 Australian federal election

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Confused

Why is there a summary total for "Liberal/National coalition" when it wasn't operating at this election? Timrollpickering (talk) 14:20, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Coalition? Reverted edit.

For all intents and purposes the Coalition still contested the election - there was still a Lib/Nat 2PP at this election and they still sat together in the previous and the next parliament. Look at Candidates of the Australian federal election, 1987 in lower and upper house for NSW. Look at Senate results at Australian federal election, 1987#Results and the 1,289,888 NSW voters who voted for the Liberal/National Coalition joint ticket. The WA and SA Nats usually have not been part of the federal Coalition and VIC has been spotty - does that mean the Coalition usually has not existed because all Libs/Nats in all states didn't run together? IMHO the article content about the coalition should be in far greater clarified and referenced detail with its own section. Timeshift (talk) 10:47, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

I'll have to dig through this later but the Coalition definitely did not exist during the election with the Nationals breaking it off at the end of April and both parties established separate front benches. IIRC the election was called in part because the opposition was in a mess and the Coalition was restored not long afterwards. Part of the confusion is that the National Party structure gives a lot of power to the state parties and Joh's drive had put the set-up under strain with the result that in New South Wales the state party operated election pacts and a joint Senate ticket rather than going head to head with the Liberals even though they would be (initially) sitting separately. The 2PP is really an indication of the political science divide rather than the counters officially declaring that the Liberals and Nationals were in harness. Timrollpickering (talk) 22:59, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

At the time the coalition was terminated, and there are multiple examples of three cornered contests between the Liberal and National parties across the country. The only state agreement that withstood the split was between the NSW branches, but as pointed out already the Nationals are quite a federated party, and especially during this time with Joh's rhetoric the NSW branch chose to preserve it's agreement. The Nationals and Liberals NSW only contested against each other in non-incumbent seats that they had previously contested against each other in 1984. These seats being Calare, Eden-Monaro, Hunter and Throsby. Yet still in NSW there was a larger swing towards the Nationals than there was towards the Liberals which may indicate the effects the rift had.

In Victoria, the Nationals fielded a candidates in Aston, Calwell and Jagajaga when in 1984 they did not, and in general. The Nationals contested 17 out of 39 seats in Victoria with all of them having Liberal candidates too.

In Queensland, all 24 seats had both National and Liberal candidates, with the Liberal party fielding candidates in Dawson (first time ever), Maranoa (first time since 1980) and Wide Bay (first time since 1974)

In Western Australia, the Nationals contested all seats, including Brand, Canning, Cowan, Curtin, Forrest, Fremantle, Kalgoorlie, Moore, Perth, Stirling, Swan and Tangney when they did not in 1984. Previously they only contested O'Connor. They got a statewide swing of +5.59 to go to 6.90.

In South Australia, the Nationals again contested every seat. They contested Bonython, Hindmarsh, Port Adelaide and Sturt when they had not in 1984, and had a positive swing towards them in every seat but Mayo which had a -0.5 swing against them.

In the Northern Territory, the NT Nationals received 17.1 of the vote. While the NT Nationals were not affiliated with the federal Nationals, they were associated with Joh's movement.

While the Liberal and National parties repaired relations following the result of the 1987 election, the coalition did not exist at this election and calling it such is inaccurate, and that with the split in the coalition there was a significant increase in the number of contests where the Liberal and National parties fielded candidates against each other, with the entirety of Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia having three-cornered contests. Also to note as stated before the 2PP is not an official part of the election but rather a psephological tool and can be maintained as a joint L/NP combination. The point made that the WA and SA Nationals historically haven't been part of the federal coalition makes the argument that they individually shouldn't have their votes counted towards the coalition totals, like the way the NT Nationals were treated, and at this election the Queensland branch of the Nationals were the branch that drove the federal coalition to split to get Joh to enter federal politics, so why should the seats and vote totals of the QLD Nationals be counted with the coalition? The same for the Victorian Nationals who had no state coalition while the federal one was broken. At this time the federal, SA, WA, QLD and Victorian coalitions didn't exist, the NT had it's own NT Nationals splinter movement and the only existing coalition was the NSW state one. The federal coalition didn't exist, the only state one to exist was NSW which is why they preserved their joint candidate agreements, but everywhere else across the country the Nationals and Liberals had split, it is incorrect to group the Liberal and National parties together as "the Coalition" for this election because one state kept its agreement. NSW was the exception to the rule for this election and it would be more accurate to represent the Liberal and National parties as individual parties. Comfisofa (talk) 14:36, 8 April 2025 (UTC)